Rhetorics of Display

by Prelli, Lawrence J.

• ISBN13: 9781570036187
• ISBN10: 1570036187
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Pr

Summary

Rhetorics of Display is a pathbreaking volume that brings together a distinguished group of scholars to assess an increasingly pervasive form of rhetorical activity. Editor Lawrence J. Prelli notes in his introduction that twenty-first century citizens continually confront displays of information and images, from the verbal images of speeches and literature to visual images of film and photography to exhibits in museums to the arrangement of our homes to the merchandising of consumer goods. The volume provides an integrated, comprehensive study of the processes of selecting what to reveal and what to conceal that together constitute the rhetorics of display. Surveying major historical transformations in the relationship between rhetoric and display, this book also identifies the leading themes in relevant scholarship of the past three decades. Seventeen case studies canvass a representative and diverse range of displays--from body piercing to a civil rights memorial to a Titanic exhibition to imagery found in gambling casinos--and examine the ways that phenomena, persons, places, events, identities, communities, and cultures are exhibited before audiences. Collectively the contributors shed light on rhetorics that are nearly ubiquitous in contemporary communication and culture.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Series Editor's Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Rhetorics of Display: An Introduction	1	(40)
Lawrence J. Prelli
Part 1 The Verbal Depiction of the Visual and the Visual Depiction of the Verbal
Satisfaction of Metaphorical Expectations through Visual Display: The Titanic Exhibition	41	(25)
Cheryl R. Jorgensen-Earp
``This Horrible Spectacle'': Visual and Verbal Sketches of the Famine in Skibbereen	66	(24)
James Michael Farrell
Visualizing a Bounded Sea: A Case Study in Rhetorical Taxis	90	(31)
Lawrence J. Prelli
Liberal Representation and Global Order: The Iconic Photograph from Tiananmen Square	121	(20)
Robert Flariman
John Louis Lucaites
Part 2 The Disposition of Place and the Placing of Disposition
National Park Landscapes and the Rhetorical Display of Civic Religion	141	(16)
S. Michael Halloran
Gregory Clark
Envisioning Postcommunism: Budapest's Stalin Monument	157	(20)
Beverly James
Displaying Race: Cultural Projection and Commemoration	177	(20)
Victoria J. Gallagher
After Walter Benjamin: The Paradise at the End of the Rainbow	197	(7)
Lawrence W. Rosenfield
Death on Display	204	(25)
Richard Morris
Part 3 Demonstrations as Rhetorical Display and Rhetorical Displays as Demonstrative
Demonstrative Displays of Dissident Rhetoric: The Case of Prisoner 885/63	229	(26)
Gerard A. Hauser
It's Showtime! Staging Public Demonstrations, Alinsky-Style	255	(18)
Jerry Blitefield
Creating Real Presences: Displays in Liminal Worlds	273	(20)
John Shotter
Part 4 Epideictic Identifications and Divisions
Epideictic and Its Cultured Reception: In Memory of the Firefighters	293	(18)
John C. Adams
Flaunting Identity: Spatial Figurations and the Display of Sexuality	311	(16)
John Nguyet Erni
Tattoo and Piercing: Reflections on Mortification	327	(17)
Phebe Shih Chao
Colin Powell's Life Story and the Display of a ``Good'' Black Persona	344	(30)
Mari Boor Tonn
Displaying the Body Politic: Televisual Exposures and Concealments	374	(25)
Joshua Meyrowitz
Selected Bibliography	399	(22)
Contributors	421	(4)
Index	425